IT’S NOT THE WINNING…
RECONSIDERING
THE CULTURAL CITY
A report on the Cultural Cities
Research Network 2011-12
Kerry Wilson
Institute of Cultural Capital, Liverpool, UK
Dr David O’Brien
City University London, UK
June 2012
Project funded by
FOREWORD
We are delighted to provide the foreword to this
report on the Cultural Cities Research Network which
considers the experience of cities that have bid for
cultural accolades. For Derry-Londonderry, the process
of bidding to become the first-ever UK City of Culture
proved to be a huge learning experience. The fact that
we subsequently won, meant that we could put in
place mechanisms to deliver our promise to genuinely
transform our city at the most fundamental level and
ensure a future of hope across all communities. The
process of bidding helped us to articulate much more
clearly what our city is about, who we are, and what
we have to offer.
We see this research as invaluable and look forward to
working with those involved in City of Culture 2017.
The report showcases what culture can do, how it can
genuinely transform, and how it can be an economic
driver. It examines the importance of competitions
and the factors for success. We are the first part of the
experiment to build a ‘UK City of Culture community’.
That is the legacy of Liverpool and one that we in DerryLondonderry intend to emulate by putting culture at
the forefront of regeneration, enabling it to be the real
game changer that it can be, not just in shaping places,
but also in changing lives.
In Northern Ireland, our journey started with the
lessons learned from the original Belfast bid to become
European City of Culture 2008. That bid underlined the
importance of establishing the city’s ambition from the
outset and informed the decision by Derry City Council,
Ilex the urban regeneration company, and the Strategic
Investment Board for Northern Ireland to collaborate
on the bid to become the first ever UK City of Culture.
It was a journey that paralleled the process to create
One City, One Plan, One Voice, Derry-Londonderry’s
regeneration plan. OECD encapsulated the potential
that City of Culture designation would have for the
city’s regeneration when they stated that it was
“not an opportunity, but the opportunity”.
Sharon O’Connor,
Chief Executive,
Derry City Council
Aideen McGinley,
Chief Executive,
Ilex urban regeneration company
Shona McCarthy,
Chief Executive,
Culture Company 2013
3
CONTENTS
PART ONE – THE CULTURAL CITIES RESEARCH
NETWORK 2011-12
06
INTRODUCTION
07
1 BIDDING FOR CULTURAL TITLES:
INCENTIVE & MOMENTUM
PART TWO – STAKEHOLDER RESPONSES
30
Response from the academic community:
31
Reconsidering the Cultural City
Jonathan Vickery, University of Warwick
32
09
35
1.1 The European Capital of Culture connection
10
Mind the gap – the cultural city and the creative economy
Roberta Comunian, University of Kent
1.2 Cultural titles and cultural leadership
12
The. Cultural. Cities. Research. Network.
Oliver Mould, University of Salford
38
1.3 Did bidding for UK City of Culture 2013 connect
communities?
13
The culture-led regeneration paradigm
Peter Campbell, University of Liverpool
40
2 THE IMPACT OF BIDDING:
REFLECTION & REJUVENATION
15
Response from the Independent Advisory Panel for UK
City of Culture
43
2.1 Losing and lost momentum
15
REFERENCES
45
2.2 Political ramifications
16
3 THE UK CITY OF CULTURE PROGRAMME:
IDEAS & RECOMMENDATIONS
18
3.1 Culture-led regeneration and the cultural compromise
18
3.2 Limitations of the competitive model
20
3.3 Bidding criteria and the selection process
21
3.4 Building a UK City of Culture community
22
3.5 Summary of UK City of Culture recommendations
23
4 EMERGING RESEARCH INTERESTS
24
4.1 Cultural titles and entitlement
24
4.2 The power of cultural collaboration
26
4.3 Cultural titles and place-making
27
4.4 Cultural titles and cultural leadership
28
5
PART ONE:
THE CULTURAL CITIES
RESEARCH NETWORK
2011-12
INTRODUCTION
The Cultural Cities Research Network (CCRN) was
formed in March 2011, as a platform for discussing and
debating the experience of bidding for cultural titles.
The UK City of Culturei 2013 competition was used as the
basis for this discussion, and the network has brought
together three of the four shortlisted cities, including
Birmingham, Sheffield and Norwich. The network was
funded initially for a 12 month period by the Arts and
Humanities Research Council (AHRCii) as part of the
cross-council Connected Communitiesiii programme. Each
year the AHRC provides funding from the Government
to support research and postgraduate study in the arts
and humanities. Only applications of the highest quality
are funded and the range of research supported by this
investment of public funds not only provides social and
cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic
success of the UK.
The project has been led by the Institute of Cultural
Capital (ICC) in association with City University London
and the University of Birmingham. Its main objectives
during March 2011 – February 2012 were to consider
and debate what connects cities during the shared
experience of bidding for a cultural title, including:
* Situated contexts, motivations and expectations
* Impact of bidding on:
The policy-making process
The role of the creative economy in city strategies
Connections between different communities
Culture-led regeneration has received increasing
attention and recognition as an urban policy paradigm
in the UK (Vickery, 2007) as cities, with varying levels
of commitment and success, have embraced the
possibility of urban development and transformation
through culture (Miles and Paddison, 2005). It is
frequently defined, stimulated or incentivised by
major cultural interventions, programmes, festivals
and events – Liverpool’s status as European Capital
of Culture in 2008 is representative of the trend in
aligning significant artistic programmes and cultural
events with the physical regeneration of a city. The
impact of such culture-led regeneration is analysed
and reported along multiple dimensions (North and
Wilks-Heeg, 2004; Griffiths, 2006; Garcia et al, 2010;
Rampton et al, 2011). Previous research has also
demonstrated that participating in the bidding process
has still encouraged a ‘momentum’ around culture
within cities that failed to win the ultimate award
(Griffiths, 2006). Less attention has been paid however
to the differing situated contexts, motivations and
expectations that mobilise individual cities (and different
communities within them) to engage in culture-led
regeneration strategies and practices, and how these
affect their relative outcomes and impact in real terms.
The CCRN has created a first step in furthering our
understanding of the bidding process and engagement
with it from the comparative, reflective perspectives
of UK City of Culture (UKCoC) 2013 short-listed cities.
The report that follows summarises the network’s
discussions to date, based on the outcomes of three
full-day research workshops held during 2011 (one per
shortlisted city), and supplementary interviews with key
figures associated with the UKCoC 2013 competition.
Research workshops were supported by Sheffield City
Council, Norwich City Council, and Birmingham City
Council and attended by a wide range of network
members including different individuals and communities
involved with or interested in the bidding process, such
as local authority representatives, academic researchers,
arts and cultural organisations, plus other businesses,
services and professions across public, private and
voluntary sectors. The views expressed within the report
are those of network participants only.
The report is structured around themes used to
plan the research workshops, including ‘incentive’,
‘momentum’ and ‘impact’. Findings indicate that the
UKCoC competition acted as a powerful catalyst in
galvanising cities to think more strategically about
their cultural offer, identity and heritage within a
national context and in comparison to other drivers.
Connections between relevant communities of practice
and interest are strengthened considerably; issues of
responsibility and representation however appear to
limit the extent to which different residential or social
communities engage in the bidding process. The political
environment has a significant impact upon the relevance
of and engagement with programmes such as UKCoC
– network members expressed an interest in forming a
wider learning community that would help to consider
and demonstrate the true cultural value of the cultural
title. The report concludes with a summary of learning
outcomes and recommendations for the on-going UKCoC
programme, and emerging research questions on the
‘cultural city’.
7
1 BIDDING FOR CULTURAL TITLES:
INCENTIVE & MOMENTUM
The ICC and partners are now keen to progress and
develop a programme of UKCoC research, building
upon these emerging questions and complementing
previous culture-led regeneration research by
considering in greater detail the motives, incentives,
mechanisms and actions that go into reconsidering the
cultural city at the bidding stages and beyond. This will
help to understand how other cities can be similarly
empowered as the UKCoC programme develops based
on the situated conditions for change, cultural capital
generated and impact achieved. Issues of not just
collective capacity, but also readiness, confidence and
ambition are integral to the process of achieving change
through culture. In this context, it is anticipated that
learning through action research of this nature will
inform and enhance the potential for aligning the
UK’s cultural and creative economy with urban policy
making and community development, revealing fresh,
contemporary insights into regional and national
cultural identities and the sustainability of culture-led
regeneration.
Participants within and across the three research
workshops were unanimous in their view that the
UKCoC 2013 competition had acted as a major incentive
in energising and encouraging cities within a cultural
context. The bidding process helps to articulate a clear
statement on a city’s cultural identity and offer, which
in turn becomes a compelling, persuasive argument to
present to stakeholders both within and beyond the
city. The experience of bidding for a cultural title seems
to generate a shared feeling that ‘culture is good’, and
is worthy of celebrating – this is otherwise difficult to
achieve without such an incentive.
Within Sheffield, the competition occurred at a time
when the city “felt ready” to capitalise upon its cultural
heritage and identity, improve its national reputation
and provided the impetus “to fire” the city’s cultural
strategy. The bid became a “common cause” between
Sheffield’s city council and cultural sector, who began
to work collaboratively with a shared objective to
acknowledge and promote the city’s cultural strengths.
Birmingham participants offered a slightly more
pragmatic perspective –the decision to bid created an
“added value” for projects and programmes already
in development within the city, with the title acting
as a vehicle from which to deliver its existing cultural
strategy. Birmingham felt that they “had to bid for it”,
stating that it would have “said more about the city if
we hadn’t”. This suggests a sense of obligation to the
competition as well as it being seen as a genuine
incentive. Norwich had a much more internally-focused,
socially orientated perspective, stating that the main
objective of the bid was “positive social change through
culture”. The Norwich bid involved creating a greater
sense of civic pride with a strong artistic lead from the
city’s cultural sector.
9
1.1 THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL
OF CULTURE CONNECTION
Birmingham and Norwich had also bid for the European
Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2008 title (awarded to Liverpool
in 2003), and network participants from these cities spoke
frequently of the momentum and consistency sustained
between this experience and bidding for UKCoC 2013.
Birmingham’s cultural strategy had “lacked purpose”
since the ECoC bid; UKCoC provided an incentive to
review the strategy, and also to enhance other initiatives
such as the ‘Be Birmingham’ local strategic partnership.
Within Norwich, some of the same people were
directly involved with each bid, and the positive energy
generated by ECoC, in particular media attention from
outside the city – “we couldn’t have paid for the column
inches it generated” – helped to fuel participation in the
UKCoC 2013 competition. The city felt “reinvigorated”
by this new opportunity – this was especially true as
the bidding team did not have to “go over the same
arguments” that had been won during ECoC bid, as the
city’s cultural profile and confidence had already been
significantly raised. Reaching the UKCoC 2013 ‘final four’
then felt like another ‘big cultural badge’ for the city.
The badge of honour metaphor has been used to
good effect by Chair of the Independent Advisory Panel
for the UK City of Culture programme (and former
Creative Director of Liverpool’s term as European
Capital of Culture 2008) Professor Phil Redmond CBE.
When asked about personal motivations for initiating
the UKCoC programme, the response below indicates
how the impact of Liverpool 08 played a formative role.
The impact described refers to the extent of national
exposure and relevance achieved by Liverpool as a
designated cultural city:
“…around about a third of the way through ‘08, I
realised exactly what we had... the media were beginning
to take more interest, we were beginning to get a lot
more media exposure, the analysis was starting to
come back about positive stories, and I could sense
the excitement and buzz around the city, and all the
different conversations that were going on, whether
it was in regeneration, whether it was in tourism, or in
health or in art... and I suddenly realised that this was
a very powerful thing, and that actually, all that it was
coming from was a title… the ‘badge of authority’ to
do something with it.” Phil Redmond, June 2011
The UKCoC competition does not include a fixed
financial prize or award, but it is expected that the
title will generate commercial benefits and economic
impact for the winning city. This again is based on the
Liverpool 08 experience, whereby the monetary value
of media profile alone was judged to be significantly
beyond what would be ordinarily achievable without
a cultural title. Estimated economic return for any
winning UKCoC city is based on a ‘scaled down’ version
of Liverpool 08, including anticipated levels of media
attention, local government and regional agency
support, and corporate sponsorship:
“Our announcements were coming through, saying
that our media profile was worth £200m at the end of
08, so we scaled it down and said a city coming along
afterwards, with that level of BBC support behind it,
which would then drag Channel 4, which would then
drag the rest of the media with it, it was going to be
worth at least £100m in media exposure. If you then
think about all those years in which everyone had
been arguing about cities, regeneration schemes
promoting themselves etc, they never had sufficient
marketing resources. Well if you can go along to
someone and say ‘here’s £100m in marketing’... that’s
a prize really worth going for. That would be the
headline that would probably get people like regional
government offices, like the RDAs, like the local
authorities, really recognise that this was a prize worth
fighting for, it’s not just a question of having a couple
of concerts, or a couple of artistic festivals, but actually
there’s a real economic regeneration opportunity to
be had.” Phil Redmond, June 2011
It was very apparent to network members that Phil
Redmond and the Department for Culture Media and
Sport (DCMS) had experienced a strong desire to
sustain the momentum created by Liverpool 08, using
its regeneration successes as the ‘incentive’ in itself for
UKCoC. Workshop participants appreciated this incentive
and were responsive to it – they considered for example
the on-going commitment to culture within Liverpool
City Council, the extent to which culture is now
embedded not just within policy processes but within
the city’s ‘psyche’, and whether or not this would
have been sustainable without Liverpool 08. Claire
McColgan MBE, Director of Culture at Liverpool City
Council (formerly Executive Producer at Liverpool
Culture Company during 2008) and Non-executive
Director of Derry-Londonderry’s Culture Company 2013,
confirmed the influence and impact that the ECoC title
had upon the city’s governing structures, spending and
strategic development:
“I wouldn’t say there was a grand plan for Liverpool
after 08, in fact I know there wasn’t, and in fact we’ve
got away with doing exceptionally well because the team
that delivered it are still here… we’re still pushing it and
still coming up with new ideas… and we’ve got a new
council who aren’t tired of it and are really ambitious
around culture and what it can do… the fact that this
council has only cut cultural organisations (funding) by
10% over 3 years is absolutely incredible… the decisions
they’re having to make and they can absolutely see the
economic viability of it, no question about it… a huge
thing is that we’re doing the biggest event we’ve ever
done in the city in April (Sea Odyssey), and the city’s up
for it, and it’s huge, and it’s bigger than anything that’s
happened in the UK in terms of complexity and size as an
outdoor event, and they’re letting us do it and you just
think ‘my god’, we’re fantastic as a city, so I think that’s
a measure of it, that we’re still allowed to create great
ideas and run with them.” Claire McColgan, January 2012
Norwich network members commented that simply
bidding for ECoC and UKCoC in succession had helped
the city council to understand the value of culture,
which is now firmly embedded as part of its corporate
plan. Other researchers however have questioned the
authenticity and appropriateness of using the ‘Liverpool
model’ to inform and structure the UKCoC programme.
Cox and O’Brien (2012) challenge its ‘transferability’
based on the situated contexts of individual cities and
their relative capacity for change. Liverpool for example
had the apparent advantage of a significant cultural
infrastructure including high-profile institutions;
existing and supplementary attention and funding
from national government, Europe and private sector
investors; and the added advantage of ‘right time right
place’ during the pre-recession ‘boom’ period for
culture-led regeneration. This echoes the ‘replicability’
issue often inherent in seeking to emulate high-profile
and successful cultural initiatives and interventions
(Landry, 2000).
It is also worth noting that Newcastle-Gateshead,
although shortlisted for ECoC 2008 competition, did
not bid for UKCoC 2013, clearly feeling neither the
incentive nor obligation experienced by Birmingham.
Similarly Brighton, another key participant in ECoC
2008, decided to withdraw from the UKCoC 2013 after
the first round of bidding. Paula Murray, Commissioner
for Culture at Brighton & Hove City Council (interviewed
in February 2012), explained that the competition
had “limited usefulness” for Brighton, as the city has
travelled a considerable distance since the ECoC bid
in defining itself as a cultural city and major tourist
destination, and aligning the city’s cultural identity
and infrastructure with other public policy agendas
including health and wellbeing and most recently the
environment. Brighton therefore no longer needs
the incentive of a designated cultural title. Network
participants were generally accepting however of the
value of ECoC as a “big marketing tool”, which could
be emulated by UKCoC and tailored to specific city
needs. Members described a feeling of “really wanting
to win” UKCoC 2013 after witnessing Liverpool 08 and
the impact it had on its hosts.
Claire McColgan offered an interesting, alternative
perspective on Liverpool’s relationship with the
UKCoC programme, including the enhanced
opportunities presented for the developmental
sharing of experiences and learning, both culturally
and professionally. The programme also acts as an
incentive for Liverpool to build upon the success of
‘08, and to feel challenged and inspired by other
cultural cities rather than promote itself to them as
the example to follow:
“…it’s very interesting for me, after being in Liverpool
for 10 years and working from the bid through to the
legacy, as to how you can use your skills really, and your
experience to help another city do things differently,
because you would always do things differently if you
had your chance to do it again… so I’ve found that really
interesting, and also for me professionally, I’ve found it
really different, advising a board, rather than actually
being in the heart and the heat of everything, and I’ve
really enjoyed that… and also the links with Liverpool
and Derry are really strong and it’s important that we
keep those links… for Liverpool, it’s very important
that we don’t get lost in the ECoC success story, it’s
important that our story is carried on and changed,
and developed and we’re not always talking about
2008 too comfortably.” Claire McColgan, January 2012
11
1.2 CULTURAL TITLES
AND CULTURAL LEADERSHIP
For cities involved in both competitions, UKCoC
presented an opportunity to evolve and bid
differently, particularly with respect to leadership
capacity and capability. In Norwich for example,
advisors commissioned during the ECoC bidding phase
were not re-commissioned for UKCoC 2013 bid, as there
was a renewed confidence in the city’s own cultural
leaders to work independently. “Enhanced leadership”
was described as a key learning outcome of both bidding
processes. The shared experience of bidding also
helps to identify collective leadership strengths and
complementarities, especially as new organisations and
consortia are formed (discussed in more detail below)
and bring ‘new life’ to cultural sectors. The ‘common
purpose’ helps this process, as professional relationships
begin to feel more equal and individual interests take
a back seat. Garrett-Petts (2005) notes that a Canadian
city’s (albeit successful) bid to host a national event,
in this case a summer games programme, came at a
time when the city was searching for a ‘shared sense
of identity’, and that the major legacy was a greater
capacity for organizational leadership and a ‘what do
we do next?’ attitude.
Despite the apparent appeal of collective leadership
approaches, UKCoC bidding cities still felt that they
needed the “right ambassadors” to both generate
support within the city and promote its cultural
offer externally. Cox and O’Brien (2012) refer to the
challenging leadership lead-in to Liverpool 08, whereby
high-profile personnel changes created an opportunity
to use the city’s ‘difficult period’ as a rhetorical device
that not only satiated media onlookers, but also
appealed directly to the people of the city in coming
from ‘one of their own’, and in recognising its
turbulent history:
“Phil Redmond’s choice of metaphor – the “scouse
wedding” – was meant partly as an explanation of
moving on from the public disintegration of the original
delivery team and several high-profile resignations, but
also as a wider comment on the nature of reconciling
multiple and often conflicting requirements and
expectations to create something unifying. Liverpool’s
“success story” stems from the narrative that the failing
city (failing not just over a few years in organising a
festival, but over decades in its economic and social
health) has somehow “turned it around”, using culture…
The media… reflected a story of competing cultural
concerns: the high profile “external” appointments
made early on, including an Australian artistic director,
eventually making way for an authentically “scouse”
saviour.” (pp. 96)
The role of individuals and mediators in driving
momentum was discussed during workshops, from the
commissioning of consultants to advise on the bidding
process, and the appropriation of local celebrities, or
even “public intellectuals” in the case of Norwich and
Stephen Fry, to ‘back’ the bid. The ambassadorial
element is seen as especially important. Claire McColgan
identified this as a current gap in Derry-Londonderry’s
preparations for 2013:
“They’ve got everything right, in terms of who they have
appointed, but they still haven’t got a spokesperson for
the city… like we had Phil… and you need that person
who’s really media friendly and is very tenacious in terms
of media I think, but that might come.” Claire McColgan,
January 2012
1.3 DID BIDDING FOR UK
CITY OF CULTURE 2013
CONNECT COMMUNITIES?
The strongest connections between different
communities within all three shortlisted cities appear
to have been made between professional groups
(‘communities of practice’), or those directly involved
in cultural planning and delivery. These include new
partnerships and the formation of professional
consortia. A particularly interesting example is the
Norwich Cultural Communities Consortium, which
was developed following ECoC 2008 in response to
a need to “look beyond Arts Council regularly funded
organisations” and the established cultural order, to
create a mechanism for smaller community-based arts
organisations to become involved with city-wide cultural
decision-making and planning. This created an added
enthusiasm for UKCoC 2013, with more organisations
‘feeling involved’. Other examples of relationship
building include greater degrees of synthesis between
culture and other public policy agendas and initiatives
within cities; another interesting example from Norwich
is Future Projects1, which uses a cultural planning
approach to community provision and development.
From a policy and governance perspective, the
bidding process has been significant in facilitating
cooperation between council departments, and a
‘greater understanding’ of the role and value of culture.
Changes in local governance structures, most notably
the creation of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), were
frequently discussed. The ‘test’ felt by some participants
will be securing the same level of support for culture
from LEPs as previously given from the regional
development agencies. In Norwich, where collective
activity and a focus on ‘place’ are still high on the
agenda, representatives from the cultural sector and
city council’s cultural department seemed confident
in their ability and capacity to work with the LEP to help
shape what they do. Paula Murray of Brighton & Hove
City Council observed that cities have to be connected
from a governance point of view for the bid to have
any degree of credibility. In that case, cities with such
a condition already in place may be in a stronger position
than others.
1
Please see http://www.futureprojects.org.uk
The extent to which different residential,
non-professionally associated communities become
connected by the bidding process, or even remotely
involved, is less evident. There are a number of barriers
or challenges to full community engagement. Network
members from both Birmingham and Norwich spoke
of difficulties in connecting communities within and
across city centres, city regions and counties. The very
idea of a ‘CITY of’ title can be quite inflammatory in
determining ‘who’ and ‘what’ constitutes the ‘city’ and
how expectations can be balanced. Another barrier is a
gap in knowledge and skills relating to HOW to engage
communities – participants spoke of the ‘blank canvas’
created by opportunities such as UKCoC for communities
to express their own ideas and interpretations of their
own cultural cities. Despite this acknowledgement, cities
still struggle with enabling “grass roots” contributions
and development.
Similarly communities are not sufficiently empowered
to proactively engage with the process. Participants
from a community action group in Birmingham
commented that it is “awkward to speak about
communities and empowerment in the same breath”,
and described the realities of inner-city living and
long-term unemployment, including “kids falling into
the abyss”. A discussion on the ‘historical perspective’
to empowering communities followed, including
communities being empowered by understanding their
own history, and by ‘other’ communities acknowledging
their cultural role and contribution. The reality of
achieving this in cities is problematic as culture becomes
increasingly ghettoised. It was also observed that the
cultural characteristics of cities will always impact upon
issues of ‘connectedness’ – including disconnected
identities and differing levels of ‘city pride’. Birmingham
members for example commented that the city does not
have the ‘same sense of collective cultural self’ compared
to Liverpool.
The stark truth presented in workshop discussions is
that UKCoC “had no relevance to kids in communities”
and just involved “the council spending more money
on a website”. Participants spoke of a need for
community work to “come into the city” and not just
to be about outreach, creating more opportunities to
bring communities together, reduce insularity and
self-dependence – “where deprivation is high, ‘culture’
is not a priority”. This raises questions similar to those
13
2 THE IMPACT OF BIDDING:
REFLECTION & REJUVENATION
posed by Mooney (2004), and directed to Liverpool
in the run-up to ’08, including “…whose and which
Liverpool is being celebrated? Whose story is dominating
– and whose story is being marginalised?” (pp. 338).
At a city level, there is a need to understand ‘buy-in’ to
culture as a city brand, and to compare the narratives
created by communities to the “official story”. More
cultural mediation between communities is required.
Phil Redmond offered an alternative to conventional
interventions and the suggestion that communities be
brought together within the city, whereby a greater
understanding of culture in city communities, including
the role, value and impact of cultural habits and
lifestyles, and what communities want based on their
own opinions, experiences and preferences is achieved:
Within Norwich, there seemed to be lots of passive
support for the UKCoC 2013 bid from the city’s residents,
and a sense that ‘the public’ was much more confident
in the city’s chances of winning as compared to ECoC
2008, which was regarded as an ambitious and
institutional title. When the city was unsuccessful, the
general response was kind natured and offered in a
‘never mind’ spirit. This indicates that a ‘community of
support’ was created within the city, even if residents
were not actively involved in the bidding process. This
sense of collective support was also felt by Claire
McColgan during Liverpool’s experience of bidding
for ECoC 2008, which she described as the best part
of the process in terms of public support and a sense
of all being in it together:
“…in ‘08 I went to so many events out in communities
like Croxteth and Kirkdale and Norris Green where
people just came together for an entire day and just
enjoyed themselves with their own community, they
didn’t need to go to Liverpool One, they didn’t need
to go to a concert or whatever, they just had a fantastic
time doing their own talent show, doing their own
garden festival, doing whatever… when I was on the
Youth Commission I asked to speak to a couple of the
kids who had been disestablished from the curriculum
and were now under special provision... after 15 minutes
they became 13 year old kids just wanting someone to
talk to... and in this conversation with them, they said
‘why did they bother building that new sports facility’…
in the old one (they) had 12 footy pitches, and two gyms
and could do this, that and the other... in the new one
(they have) got one pitch and an Olympic swimming
pool... and then they say, and the other one was free
and this one costs us £2.75 and it’s crap... so instead of
spending £20m, if they had said to the local community,
here’s a million, tart it up… another couple of million to
subsidise it for the next 20 years, that would have gone a
hell of a lot further than this iconic, PFI white elephant...
and it’s that kind of thing, we need research on that, that
communities can do it themselves… we need to kind of
get into the community and do the research, that goes
back to policy makers and says that actually this is the
way it is, and this is really what the big society is about,
never mind all the political rhetoric or whatever, it’s
about turning round to the community and saying what
do you want?” Phil Redmond, June 2011
“…I think if we hadn’t won, nobody really expected
Liverpool to win, so if we hadn’t it wouldn’t have been
a surprise, but the work that we did was all around
connecting communities, it was absolutely about making
sure that culture was absolutely more than just the sum
of three arts officers… so whatever we’d have done in
terms of the bid, it absolutely raised the profile of culture
within the city, and people got it, and they loved it,
and that would have been great even if we hadn’t won.
I think that bidding for something is the best part,
actually delivering things or not delivering them is the
worst isn’t it? And then everyone wants a bit of it don’t
they?” Claire McColgan, January 2012
Decisions invariably have to be made and acted upon
by the few - this opens up the question as to whether
it is realistic to expect all communities within a city
to engage in the bidding stages, and whether indeed
they would want to be involved, given the choice.
Participants were honest in stating that the risk of
excluding some groups and communities may be an
‘unintended consequence’ of the bidding process. It
was considered to be easier to engage (all) communities
when the ‘title is won’. The examples of more connected
cultural working in Norwich given above indicate that
the bidding process acts as an enabler in establishing
opportunities for connecting communities in the future
– this should not be overlooked as an example of
potentially significant social impact, and should be
considered in greater detail as the UKCoC competition
develops.
2.1 LOSING AND
LOST MOMENTUM
UKCoC 2013 acted therefore as a high-impact incentive
during the bidding phase, but momentum is seemingly
lost as time passes and the competition becomes less
relevant to unsuccessful cities. In one ‘first round’
bidding city, despite having written into the bid how
the proposed plan would be adapted if unsuccessful,
the “initial buzz” became dispersed and the arts
programme was not supported by local authority.
It was observed that momentum is more likely to be
maintained if driven from ‘bottom up’ throughout,
but this is difficult to accomplish for reasons already
identified. A ‘middle out’ option was also put forward;
with many ‘grass roots’ voluntary organisations now
feeling the same protective insularity as city councils,
cities need people and organisations that are “feeling
relatively stable” to act as connectors and keep
momentum going.
In her role as Non-executive Director of
Derry-Londonderry’s Culture Company 2013, Claire
McColgan was able to feedback positive accounts of
the city’s experiences in preparation for 2013 - arguably
with more coverage and dissemination, these stories
would maintain interest levels in the UKCoC programme:
“I think it’s (UKCoC) really important because what it
does is focuses a city’s mind on something… I think David
Henshaw in 2000 or whatever called Liverpool 08 the
rocket fuel for regeneration, which is exactly what it is,
it focuses people’s minds on it… so I think it is really
important, for cities like Derry, it’s changed things…
they’ve brought huge amounts of money into the city
because of it, huge amounts of attention on the city in
a really good way, and there’s everything to play for
with it… the resources that have come in are huge,
and also the fact that it has raised the profile of DerryLondonderry in a very different way than what it is
known for… and I think it will continue to do that.”
Claire McColgan, January 2012
The transience of the bidding experience is also
compounded by varying levels of consciousness and
awareness of cultural titles, their value and relevance.
During one discussion for example, participants could
not name the current (2011) European Capital of Culture,
despite the relative significance and impact of Liverpool
08. It was also observed that Derry-Londonderry had
kept a relatively low profile since winning the 2013 title,
so it was difficult to understand, at least at this stage,
what “success looks like” for UKCoC. Many participants
felt that the momentum of the competition could have
been sustained with more visibility from the title holder,
including more communication and connections with
shortlisted cities. On reflection, some participants from
Norwich and Birmingham noted that bidding for UKCoC
had not generated the “same level” of momentum as
ECoC 2008. It was only when reconvened and reminded
of the experience that some network members became
conscious of the actual long-term impact of bidding –
the Norwich workshop in September 2011 for example
provided the first opportunity for the bidding team to
get together since the announcement of the winning
UKCoC 2013 city in summer 2010.
15
2.2 POLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS
In some cases the political ramifications felt by
unsuccessful bidding cities cast a serious shadow over
any positive impacts felt during the bidding phase.
When asked if they would bid again for this or similar
cultural titles, participants from Birmingham explained
that the ‘appetite was lost’, especially within the context
of two successive failed bids. Such failure is off-putting
for arts organisations “fighting for survival”. Bidding
raises aspirations; unfulfilled aspiration was described
as a “sore on the city”, and another bid as “pure
masochism”. Local political agendas will also impact
upon a city’s capacity and willingness to repeatedly
compete on a national scale – the localism agenda
was described as ‘too strong’ in Birmingham by one
participant, whereas the previous administration had
an explicit regeneration agenda.
The extent to which there is a “level playing field”
between different UK cities was also questioned,
particularly in that some cities have more to win or
lose than others. Of the three cities involved in network
discussions, Sheffield had expressed the strongest desire
to win, and therefore the greatest disappointment in
being unsuccessful, describing the decision as being
“hard to deal with”. With cities at different stages of
cultural development, this will affect the way in which
they can bid, which potentially makes a ‘like for like’
judging process difficult and inappropriate. In relation
to preconceived notions of the cultural city, those not
usually recognised as such have the most to gain from
cultural titles, as in the experience of Glasgow, “a gritty
industrial city with severe social problems” (Griffiths,
2006, pp. 417), in becoming the first ‘non-conventional’
European Capital of Culture in 1990. Claire McColgan
also expressed an opinion on the level playing field issue,
and recommended an on-going consideration of the
‘type’ of cultural city that could or should receive the
title, based on the impact it would have upon that city:
“…it can re-energise in a big way a city, and I think
that could be really exciting. If you look at somewhere
like York, there is so much competition within the UK
at the moment around tourism and inward investment
and whatever, that you might want to look at cities that
have got a great foundation but have lost their way a
bit in the last sort of 5-10 years and that can be really
exciting… and I suppose it’s about cities where it can
really make a difference, it made a huge difference to
Liverpool, it’s making a huge difference to Derry, would
it have made the same difference to Birmingham, I don’t
know, because Birmingham is Birmingham. It would
have been a brilliant brand for them but would it have
been lost on that city? I don’t know.” Claire McColgan,
January 2012
Participants were conscious of current political climates,
agendas and structural changes, both regional and
national, and how these might affect the UKCoC
competition moving forward. The ‘halcyon days’ of
public spending within which Liverpool 08 took place
are no longer applicable – the new assumption is that
public money will “no longer flow” to initiatives such
as UKCoC and that a different way of bidding and
delivering should be considered. This may also affect
the extent to which the “brand of the prize” is seen as
attractive to central government, and extent to which
expectations should reflect UK economic growth.
Although some nervousness was clearly evident during
workshops about the economic fortunes of ‘culture’
within cities, members were pragmatic and open to
different approaches to funding, acknowledging that
tourism and place-making, key facets of the UKCoC
competition, are essentially private-sector driven.
Representatives of Birmingham City Council noted
that the competition had encouraged “increased
engagement with private sector” amongst cultural
organisations. It was also acknowledged that the
publicly-funded, project-based, ‘elastoplast’ nature
of cultural programming may not be missed by some,
as it is no longer considered appropriate or desirable.
Given the sometimes harsh consequences felt when
bids for cultural titles are unsuccessful, the question
emerges as to why cities do not, as in the case of
Brighton, capitalise to greater effect on their cultural
offer without a ‘cultural city’ title? Phil Redmond
offered a number of explanations as to why the
‘badge of authority’ is so important and effective in
galvanising cities. It was acknowledged that cities
do of course have their own existing marketing and
tourism strategies regarding arts calendars, cultural
assets and events. A ‘cultural city’ title however brings
national attention and exposure that would be
otherwise difficult and expensive to secure, encourages
a renewed focus and branding opportunities, and acts
as an external marketing device to engage national
business communities both within and beyond arts
and cultural sectors:
“…the point is, they do do it, this is the interesting
thing actually... they do do it because you can go into
any city and talk to their marketing and tourism people...
they will show you a programme of events that is really
interesting, right? The thing that’s missing is national
media exposure, and as we always complain being outside London, there’s so much going on that is completely
ignored by the national media because it’s all focused
on London... it’s all based in London... so what the real
prize was, is to bring national media exposure with it.
Through doing that, it would also bring the national
arts organisations... they would bring the Tate, they
would bring RIBA Sterling prize, they would have English
Heritage set aside funding for a project every four years.
And then by doing that, by having the national media
exposure, by creating special events, you then find that
sponsors are easier to find... sponsors see that they are
getting some return on their money.” Phil Redmond,
June 2011
This level of exposure and sponsorship opportunities
is especially pertinent when the subsidised arts are in
a position of vulnerability, especially within regions
where the potential of culture-led regeneration is still
not fully understood or appreciated:
“…if you talk to the Arts Council now, loads of cities
and counties and councils are cutting their cultural
funding absolutely dramatically, whether it’s libraries or
whether it’s the arts… Somerset have just come out and
got rid of their arts funding, there is still a way to go
for places to believe that culture can actually drive the
economic viability of a city. Liverpool kind of got there,
Manchester has got there, Brighton’s there, but there
are lots of places who think it’s a very easy win just to
get rid of that sector completely.” Claire McColgan,
January 2012
17
3 THE UK CITY OF CULTURE PROGRAMME:
IDEAS & RECOMMENDATIONS
3.1 CULTURE-LED
REGENERATION AND THE
CULTURAL COMPROMISE
Although the ‘Liverpool Model’ described above goes
some way to justify the creation of UKCoC, its influence
on the bidding framework was questioned by some
participants within network discussions. The perceived
focus on economic impact and regeneration created
a certain tension between ‘external’ versus ‘internal’
requirements – cities felt challenged by what they really
wanted out of the title and what was expected from
them. These included mixed messages from DCMS: on
the one hand the competition was presented as a way to
engage people within cities, but the bidding framework
underplayed the cultural programme, arguably the most
inspiring aspect to engage people with. It was seen as
much more difficult to get people involved in “pound in
your pocket” pitches. In this context the bid document
felt technically constraining, and that ideas were being
shoe-horned into particular agendas. Claire McColgan
also expressed some concerns over the dominance of
regeneration as the reasoning behind the programme
and how it is used to define a cultural city:
“There is a danger that if it keeps going down the
regeneration route, that you don’t see the other side
of what culture does, and I think it would be interesting
to have a completely different city doing it, that looks
at culture from a different angle, otherwise it could just
become about regeneration, Liverpool obviously did
that, it’s a big thing for Derry, but there are other
reasons as to why culture is really important… it’s about
reinvigorating cities as well… the interesting thing about
Derry and Liverpool that’s very similar, is inherently
they’ve got a great cultural offer, without being a City
of Culture they’re really cultural cities… it might be
interesting to look at somewhere that hasn’t necessarily
got that but has got other things looking to the future.”
Claire McColgan, January 2012
The ‘culture versus sport’ issue was used to illustrate
the continuing difficulties in aligning culture with
economic impact within cities. This included public
perceptions of the economic value of titles and events,
and the appeal of such ‘prizes’. Everybody for example
would see the value of, and subsequently back, any bid
to host the World Cup. Sport is more widely appreciated
as a marketable commodity. Some cities embraced
the challenge; this played a key role in the bidding
experiences of the city of Sheffield for example, which
was keen to build a business community around culture.
At a local level the competition raised confidence in
marketing the city’s cultural offer to external audiences
via its national focus. It was suggested however that
cultural value within the UKCoC framework should not
purely be expressed in monetary terms. The lack of any
standard method of measuring or evaluating economic
impact in the sector should be considered here, although
notably DCMS2 is currently seeking to address this. The
UKCoC programme presents a meaningful long-term
‘case’ within which to test and develop emerging
methodologies and alternative approaches.
It should be acknowledged that network members
offered subjective reflections on the bidding process
further to their experiences of preparing and submitting
an unsuccessful bid. Phil Redmond uses the term ‘step
change’ to describe the method requested from cities
in bidding for the UKCoC title, including a description
of the baseline position from which cities will use the
year to achieve positive impact in relation to local
participation, community cohesion, social inclusion and
tourism and city image. Whilst such indicators do not
limit bids to predictions of economic impact alone,
the predetermination of ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’, and
guarantee of resources required, are criticised by Cox
and O’Brien (2012) for treating the title as a stand-alone
activity and forcing bidding cities to assume direct
causal impact. Garcia et al (2010, pp. 60) warn against
making “ambitious promises at the bid stage” and
their implications for managing expectations of what
a cultural title can achieve in isolation, including the
caveat that many of the trends identified in the
evaluation report on Liverpool 08 “arise from a range
of factors, of which the ECoC title is only one”.
2
When asked to describe what had impressed the most
about bids from the three shortlisted cities, Phil Redmond
offered a much more malleable explanation that was
sensitive to situated conditions and characteristics, and
included factors such as community engagement and
collaborative working:
“…they wanted to get their disparate communities
understanding and talking to each other… Birmingham
for example came in and said by something like 2018…
they would be the youngest city in Europe, by age
of population... so that would give them a particular
interest to really connect with young people, and I know
that this is often the mantra of policy-makers – ‘must
connect with young people’ – but they could see it
becoming a huge social and economic issue within the
city… every city you go to has pockets of deprivation,
and has pockets of wealth… (which is) a comparative
problem for them to resolve, so they saw culture, and
the badge as an opportunity for different communities
to start understanding this and working together...
Norwich made great play of its literature if I remember,
and they were going to build a new arts centre... this
would give them the opportunity to build some kind
of iconic structure, where they would get cross party
and multi-discipline support, instead of the usual sort
of yah-boo, bing-bong politics that goes on saying ‘well
why should we be spending it on this instead’. With the
badge, it can bring people as I said to lower their partisan
agendas and collaborate”. Phil Redmond, June 2011
A broader articulation of impact is more appealing
to smaller cities and local authorities, as expressed by
network members from Wakefield, one of the original
bidding cities for UKCoC 2013. Wakefield’s inspiration
for joining the competition was not linked to thoughts
of “where do we need to get to”, but rather “how
far can we progress”, emulating the ‘step change’
theory promoted by Phil Redmond. This would create
a greater incentive for cities with aspiration, but not
necessarily the infrastructure to support it. Other
network members recognised that the general ethos
of UKCoC is to transform cities rather than showcase
what already exists to merely drive up visitor numbers
– they did not interpret the bidding framework therefore
as “overbearingly economic”. It was suggested that the
bidding framework should be structured to enable a
more explicitly equitable, incremental process to happen,
that acknowledges the contexts and conditions within
individual cities, and reconsiders the perceived
dominance (in some cases) of economic impact and a
stronger communication of its ‘transformational’ ethos.
Please see http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/7660.aspx
19
3.2 LIMITATIONS OF THE
COMPETITIVE MODEL
Despite the clearly expressed galvanising qualities of
bidding for a cultural title, the competitive element
of UKCoC was a source of much debate within research
workshop discussions, including questions such as ‘does
it have to be a competition?’ and ‘would the incentive
still be as powerful if not?’. In this context, the
competition was compared to other cultural titles,
such as the Norwich bid to become a UNESCO City
of Literature, capitalising on its literary heritage and
resources such as its International Centre for Writing
(established by Norwich City Council in association with
University of East Anglia). Although the galvanising
qualities of the competitive ‘year of’ model presented
by UKCoC at both bidding and award-holding stages
(e.g. specific timeframes, the need to deliver ‘x’ by ‘y’)
have their advantages, the more permanent aspects
of UNESCO Creative City titles, in comparison, appear
to make cities feel less exposed during the bidding
processes, so that there is perhaps ‘less to lose’. The
UNESCO process was described by one (former city
council) participant as “healthier”, due to the economic
anti-climax associated with UKCoC, as most arts
organisations immediately redirected their focus to
Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation (NPO)
funding and “economic survival”. It was also observed
that competitive models such as UKCoC create more
(visible) ‘losers than winners’.
The UKCoC steering group should also be mindful of
other UK-based cultural titles and their relationship
to UKCoC. Birmingham for example was awarded the
Creative City title by DCMS in 2011, which is designed
to encourage enhanced public and private sector
synergies including joint commissioning and partnership
working in association with Greater Birmingham and
Solihull LEP. The city council, along with cultural and
creative organisations is now exploring innovative
finance pilots, and using the “current state of flux”
as an opportunity to do things differently, no longer
relying on non-sustainable grant partnerships. This
furthermore negates the incentive for Birmingham
to ‘bid again’ for a competitive cultural title, and may
encourage other cities to consider and work towards
other options.
In reviewing the competitive aspects of UKCoC, network
members began to reconsider how the cultural city
could be defined and designated. Workshops took place
before DCMS confirmed in February 2012 that UKCoC
would continue, with the next title to be hosted in 2017.
Participants were generally supportive of UKCoC, and
feared that the Coalition may not fully back something
of this nature, which was originally conceived under a
New Labour administration and in a radically different
political and economic climate. Participants were
reluctant to send a message back to DCMS that suggests
a lack of support for UKCoC, or that might discourage
other cities from bidding, and discussed other options
for awarding the UKCoC title. It was observed that
the process could be made more democratic, less
“painful and expensive”, and framed in a way that
supports the UK-wide creative economy. A ‘rotation
model’ was recommended, whereby cities must meet
certain criteria to reach a shortlist (reviewed periodically)
and are then invited to host the title on a rotation
basis. The UKCoC programme would then become a
PR vehicle for the whole country, strengthening the
varied and complementary offers of all cities, rather
than just the ‘winning’ city every four years. Paula
Murray of Brighton & Hove City Council commented that
the “point of a national title should be to collaborate,
not compete”.
Participants indicated that it was often difficult to
understand and explain what the UKCoC ‘prize’ was,
and in some circumstances the demands of bidding
seemed to outweigh the potential outcomes and
economic return, particularly in the absence of a
discernible ‘cash prize’. Bidding cities were equally
keen however to understand the intrinsic value of
the title – what would be the cultural benefits of being
UK City of Culture? In this context it was felt that the
competitive element may hinder cultural sharing
and development, with participating cities feeling
‘protective’ of their own offer. The 2013 competition
generated a lot of curiosity and bids in the first round,
which were reduced significantly at the shortlisting
stages. It was suggested that cities will be paying
particular attention to the experiences of
Derry-Londonderry in 2013 before deciding to bid
again, should the UKCoC competition continue in its
current form, in order to understand more fully what
the incentive actually is.
3.3 BIDDING CRITERIA AND
THE SELECTION PROCESS
The process was also considered by some to be overly
long and expensive. In Sheffield for example, the city
council’s Head of Arts was seconded to write the bid
for 4-5 months, which took time away from other
cultural programming activities. Arguably this time and
investment has now fed into the city’s cultural strategy,
so with hindsight has not been wasted. Similarly
Norwich members are looking at ways to use and apply
their UKCoC 2013 bid document, and not simply for
‘other bids’. Suggestions included making it cultural
leaders’ responsibility to update the document on an
annual basis and use the data as the city’s cultural
knowledge base, helping to inform cultural strategy,
marketing campaigns etc. The combined ECoC and
UKCoC bid documents were described as a ‘true story’
for Norwich as a cultural city. Future bidding cities should
be encouraged to consider therefore how any outputs
from the bidding process, such as cultural data and
intelligence, can be reapplied at a later stage.
“800 years of history! If you were looking for the first
UK City of Culture, after Liverpool, Derry-Londonderry
was actually quite an easy decision in the end for the
judges, because they had gone straight into the fact
of recognising that culture and education is the way to
bridge all divisions and crack all boundaries, and their
strap line of cracking the cultural code, was about sort
of drilling in to what makes us who we are, what we
are, where we are and what makes up cities. They made
a great play of saying that they would see this as a
binding agent that would help bring an end to 400 years
of trouble in the city… they didn’t shy away from the fact
that their difficult history would be part of their shared
future.” Phil Redmond, June 2011
Network members have also expressed a desire for
greater clarity on the decision-making process and
how and why the successful city was selected. From a
technical point of view, it was felt that cities with the
strongest infrastructure in place (for example with
baseline visitor figures used to predict tourism growth)
and the more systematic bid would be most likely to
succeed. However it was observed that other factors
such as character, instinct, cultural history and social
conditions had played a much stronger role in the
selection of Derry-Londonderry as UKCoC 2013. Greater
clarification on these issues may help to address
some of the ‘level playing field’ concerns previously
highlighted. Phil Redmond gave the following reasons
for Derry-Londonderry’s success:
21
3.4 BUILDING A UK CITY
OF CULTURE COMMUNITY
The cities involved in the ECoC 2008 competition
commented frequently on the network that was formed
by this process, which continued to work together
following Liverpool’s successful bid. Claire McColgan
also spoke about the value and impact of this network:
“… (what the ECoC bid did) was engage 17 cities really
in a whole cultural experience… we developed a whole
programme with those cities, and there was an urban
cultural network that was set up, which involved those
cities talking to each other on a regular basis, developing
programmes to support Liverpool in 2008, and we
developed Friendship, which was our big programme,
and we developed Portrait of a Nation, and the
relationships that were built over those 6 years were
just fantastic. I think it’s unfortunate that the Olympics
didn’t take that group on to carry on developing their
potential, because actually, it was a great way of cities
working together for a greater good really, and I’m
really proud of that and think it was a good way
forward.” Claire McColgan, January 2012
Networks such as this are seen as extremely powerful
in sustaining the attention that bidding cities gain from
bodies including DCMS, Arts Council and the national
press – such attention was regularly quoted as one of the
main benefits of bidding for UKCoC and other cultural
titles. Norwich members commented on the on-going
support they have received from such bodies, which they
believe to be a direct result of their involvement with
ECoC and UKCoC competitions and relationships created.
Increasing the visibility of such outcomes via a UK-wide
network of bidding or shortlisted cities would not just
help to promote UKCoC and participating cities, but
also provide a platform from which to assess its broader
impact. It is imperative from an operational and
strategic point of view that cities ‘feedback’ on the
legacies of participating at each stage.
Paula Murray, who had also participated in the ECoC
network in her role at Brighton & Hove City Council,
commented that DCMS had demonstrated a “lack of
leadership” in failing to provide on-going support for
the initiative, and more generally in its incapacity to
work more closely with other government departments
and city councils in unifying cultural policy developments
with other national and regional agendas. Paula
regarded this objective as being more of a priority for
DCMS, especially with reference to health and wellbeing
agendas, than supporting something like UKCoC, and
suggested that more of an effort should be made by
the government department to increase the visibility
of the sector.
3.5 SUMMARY OF UK CITY OF
CULTURE RECOMMENDATIONS
Workshop participants agreed that the ECoC network
did not get sufficient purchase from DCMS, or from
higher education institutions (HEIs). The UKCoC
organising committee consulted with members of the
network when developing the programme – there is
a real opportunity therefore to reconvene this group,
and link with the Cultural Cities Research Network
to facilitate connections with HEIs. One Birmingham
network member commented that according to
National Geographic, a significant contributing factor
to the ultimate cultural city is the presence of HEIs, yet
the University of Birmingham is routinely excluded in
city planning and not regarded as a cultural organisation.
Landry (2000) comments that the transformation
fulfilled by the successful creative city – and aspired
to by UKCoC – cannot be realised without a learning
system to support it. A UKCoC network would help to
overcome ‘lost momentum’ issues as time lapses between
competitions; capitalise on the positive impacts of
bidding in using other cities as benchmarks and mentors;
create a national cultural community that supports
the UK-wide creative economy; facilitate greater
opportunities for research and knowledge exchange
with HEI members; align outcomes of the programme
more closely with other public policy agendas; and
ultimately provide the critical mass required by
policy-makers in reviewing the added value of UKCoC.
* Increase visibility of title-holding city, including
sustained connections with shortlisted cities and
greater media presence, in order to overcome issues
of ‘lost momentum’, and provide reassurance to
future bidding cities regarding the credibility and
viability of the title.
The following recommendations or suggestions for
the on-going UKCoC programme are made as a
representation of network discussions only, and in the
interests of summarising the more applied outcomes of
the funded project. Authors acknowledge that these are
based solely on the subjective experiences of cities that
were unsuccessful in bidding for the inaugural UKCoC
title – as such the Independent Advisory Panel for the UK
City of Culture programme has been invited to respond
to these recommendations and other observations
presented in the report (please see Part Two - page 43).
* Review bidding framework to ensure that the
‘transformational’ potential of the title is not lost
or subsumed by economic demands, and to allow
for more flexible and equitable definitions of the
cultural city.
* Reconsider the ‘competitive’ bidding element, and
how this may impact upon or limit collaborative
working and knowledge sharing on a national basis.
* Make the bidding and selection process more
consistent and transparent, in order to facilitate
a more discernible ‘level playing field’ for all
future bidding cities based on their own contexts
and conditions.
* Consider the creation and support of a UK City of
Culture network or community of interest to enable
greater opportunities and a platform for national
cross-sector learning and knowledge sharing.
23
4 EMERGING RESEARCH INTERESTS
One of the main objectives of the Cultural Cities
Research Network in its initial AHRC-funded period
was to develop a research community interested
in cultural titles and their impact on communities.
Throughout each network discussion, participants
identified emerging research questions and interests,
which could then form the basis of collaborative
research projects for the network to take forward
and develop in association with additional
communities of interest and cultural researchers.
These are as follows:
4.1 CULTURAL TITLES
AND ENTITLEMENT
Several research questions were raised concerning the
sense of entitlement that comes with cultural titles
and how this is experienced or otherwise by different
city communities. Some questions link directly to
conventional issues of participation and engagement,
and how this is captured and measured. Birmingham City
Council became concerned by this process when working
through its bid, particularly as Birmingham is a ‘young
city’ in terms of age of population. The cultural activities
of young people need to be measured differently to
the conventional methods of ‘bought a ticket/entered a
building/consumed a product’. This concern has led to the
development of the Happy Brummies research project in
association with the University of Birmingham. A similar
project on different ‘rules of engagement’ for different
communities within UK Cities of Culture would be of
value to a wide range of stakeholders.
Birmingham in this context is a “city of young migrants,
with no roots in the city” – the city’s future cultural
identities will depend on its young people, and they
should therefore feel the greatest sense of entitlement
from cultural awards. Network members expressed an
interest in exploring the role of young people as ‘cultural
ambassadors’, including their influence for example
within their networks of friends, family and school, and
based on their own understanding and interpretation of
culture and cultural engagement.
Other specific ‘cultural titles and entitlement’ questions
include:
* Comparing cultural titles – what are the impacts of
different titles upon cities and their cultural narratives?
How do cultural titles help to model the cultural city?
* Why do cities feel empowered to bid? How can
this be used to empower people to become
culturally engaged?
* Communities in the cultural city – what different
versions and experiences of culture exist in
cities? Do cultural titles entitle different communities
to participate and engage in different types of
culture? Are different versions and experiences of
culture celebrated equally by the cultural city?
* What is the role of communities in the
creative economy?
* How does your understanding of YOUR cultural
heritage affect aspiration and entitlement?
* What roles do resistance and counter-culture have
in the bidding process and the ‘cultural year’?
Participants were also keen to explore the impact of
cultural titles within the wider cultural context of the
city, using the premise that culture does not work in
isolation. A significant recent cultural event in Norwich
for example was the promotion of Norwich City Football
Club to the Premier League. This will impact not just
upon media attention, external interest and visitors to
the city, but on internal confidence and aspiration. There
is a need therefore to think of ‘cultural status’ - including
titles such as UKCoC - in a more sociological sense,
considering the way cities do things and live their cultural
lives, and how such “an interrelated set of experiences”
contributes to the quality of a city as suggested by
Florida (2002, pp. 232).
25
4.2 THE POWER OF
CULTURAL COLLABORATION
A significant outcome for each of the short-listed UKCoC
2013 cities has been the collaborations and partnerships
formed or strengthened by the experience – in the case
of Derry-Londonderry, this continues to be true as the
city prepares for 2013:
“…there are organisations that are working together…
if you just look at the fact that when there was an
incendiary device outside the city of culture office,
the whole city more or less came out to say how
wrong it was, and that the UK City of Culture was
a really good thing.” Claire McColgan, January 2012
Despite practical progress made in this context, there is
still a desire to understand or learn more about how to
collaborate. Questions include:
* Is the cultural sector more predisposed to
collaboration than others?
* What is the organisational culture of cultural
collaborations, and how do they work in practice?
* Can the cultural sector only successfully
collaborate with itself?
* What is the true impact of cross-sector collaborations,
and what do different sectors learn from one another?
* Limits to collaboration – how does sector
fragmentation (e.g. differences between ‘creative’
and ‘cultural’ sectors) affect collaborative working?
Research on culture-led regeneration itself needs to
be more collaborative with other agencies and service
providers in order to interrogate the true social and
economic impact of cultural intervention in relation to
public service provision. Research that is responsive to
anecdotal evidence from professional sectors will help
to constructively improve the evidence base for culture,
not just in providing evidence of an economic reason to
invest in culture, but of the cultural shifts that may also
be achievable:
“…we need to get more research done alongside health
and police and transport on the anecdotal basis that
they themselves say that the increase in confidence and
wellbeing in Liverpool in 2008 (for example) reduced
the demand on their services, and it did it from a health
point of view by reducing mild depression... Mersey Care
anecdotally tells me that £1 invested in a reading group,
to which they can send somebody who is developing
mild depression, can ultimately save them £38,000... They
are slowly pulling their own data together on that… to
go back to their oversight Board, or the regional health
authority whoever it is, they’ve got to be able to go back
and say we’d like to keep spending money on reading
groups and cultural activity because it saves us this down
the line. Same with the police... the police anecdotally
say that they discovered from 08 that if you get say 1,000
smiling volunteers out at a large scale city event they can
withdraw 200 officers, now 200 officers is a pretty hefty
cost, but it’s not just that... why withdraw 200 officers
with their commando this and that, shields and crash
helmets... it changes the very nature of the event, it
changes the nature of the city.” Phil Redmond, June 2011
4.3 CULTURAL TITLES
AND PLACE-MAKING
Network members were also interested in exploring
the extent to which cultural titles help to generate
“a better sense of self and place”, including cohesive
messages that encapsulate all agendas. Do cultural
titles create a greater opportunity for and sense of city
councils, cultural organisations, education providers,
public services such as housing associations genuinely
working together within one cultural identity? Other
place-making interests included the practice and impact
of city marketing and branding, and the ‘cohesiveness’
of such strategies. One member commented that the city
of Birmingham is “better at promoting itself on London
underground than anywhere else”, raising questions on
who cities market themselves to and why. Other
place-making questions include:
* How can tourism and place-making relate more/better
to communities themselves?
* What are the cultural place-making experiences of
cities that do not bid or aspire to cultural titles?
* How cohesive is collaboration? Can whole cities
change the way they work?
* How is the impact of collaboration expressed? Are we
doing things better or saving money?
27
4.4 CULTURAL TITLES AND
CULTURAL LEADERSHIP
The UKCoC programme also presents an interesting
longitudinal research site within which to study both
the concept and practice of cultural leadership, a term
that is used recurrently within international cultural
policy and arts management, but has received relatively
little attention from researchers in the field. Emerging
interpretations and definitions of cultural leaders (from
the leadership literature) include:
Mode
Features
Attributes
Societal perspectives
Community
Cultural leaders seen as ‘one of us’
(relative to place)
Identity
Belonging
Aesthetic perspectives
Inherent value
(cultural value)
Belief-driven
Cultural leaders seen as ‘agents of change’
Cultivating
Advocacy perspectives
Agenda-driven
(influence)
Political
Cultural leaders seen as ‘figure heads’
Visibility
Table 1 – Modes of cultural leadership adapted from Bolden et al (2011)
It could be interesting therefore to explore modes of
cultural leadership (pre-determined and otherwise)
within the context of UKCoC, considering for example
the extent to which leadership is internally (in relation
to host city) or externally (nationally) driven, and its
impact upon the relative successes and/or failures of
both bidding campaigns and delivery during the title
year and beyond. Other considerations include
‘leadership legacies’ within title-holding cities (e.g.
what happens when cultural leaders change?), and how
cultural leadership is incentivised within the post-award
period to maintain the momentum and active promotion
of the cultural city.
Additional ‘leadership’ questions for consideration
include:
* How does bidding for cultural titles impact (from a
developmental perspective) upon cultural capacity
and leadership?
* How does the appropriation of public intellectuals
and figureheads (e.g. Stephen Fry) represent the
cultural city?
Across all identified research interests, there is an
underpinning necessity for longitudinal research that
continues to question and map the significance of
cultural titles and self-proclaimed cultural cities, in order
to fully address the contentious issue of ‘impact’. Even
in the heralded Liverpool example, Cox and O’Brien
(2012) stress that the success story remains incomplete
in the absence of any continuing study of the long-term
impact of ECoC 2008. The UKCoC programme creates
a national research site within which to consider this.
In all discussions of on-going research interests it was
observed that “six month projects are not good enough”,
and that there is a desire within the network for greater
collaborative, more long-term approaches to research
that supports and underpins the development, successes
and failures of cultural cities.
29
PART TWO:
STAKEHOLDER
RESPONSES
On 22nd May 2012, members of the wider academic
community, including researchers from cultural policy,
urban development and arts management fields,
were invited to a seminar at Merseyside Maritime
Museum, Liverpool to discuss findings presented in
part one of this report, future plans for the network
and implications for the culture-led regeneration
research landscape. As part of this event, invited panel
speakers including Dr Jonathan Vickery, University of
Warwick; Dr Roberta Comunian, University of Kent;
Dr Oliver Mould, University of Salford; and Dr Peter
Campbell, University of Liverpool were asked to
respond to the report, drawing upon their own
research practices and experiences, and to consider
the following three questions:
What motivates the cultural city?
Who defines the cultural city?
What value does a cultural city title have?
Written academic responses are included in pages
32-42, reflecting the inherent challenges and
research opportunities presented by the ‘cultural city’
phenomenon, including the perplexities of ‘culture’ as
a public policy narrative and strategy; local versus
global tensions in the process of ‘cultural validation’;
the (disconnected) relationship between the cultural
city and the creative economy; the need for greater
consideration of the science of the city and its
constituent parts, including frequently marginalised
sub-cultures; and the socio-economic conditions,
cultural distinctions and transformative illusions of
the cultural city. There then follows a response to
‘part one’ of the report from the Independent
Advisory Panel for the UK City of Culture programme.
31
Dr Jonathan Vickery is Associate Professor and an MA
Director in the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at the
University of Warwick. He has been a Henry Moore
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Director of The Aesthesis Project,
and co-editor of the journal Aesthesis, as well as
contributing editor to Art & Architecture Journal.
His research is currently focusing on the cultural
politics of urban cultural policy, cultural space and
urban intervention. He has published on art theory,
organizational aesthetics, urban regeneration, with
recent articles for Ixia public art think tank and
LabKULTUR.tv. He is working on a book Creative Cities
and Public Cultures: art, democracy and urban lives.
I am responding to both the AHRC/Institute of Cultural
Capital ‘Cultural Cities Research Network’ report by way
of three questions: What motivates the cultural city?
Who defines the cultural city? What value does a cultural
city title have?
Our three questions are both positive and normative, and
given that the first UK City of Culture is yet to happen
(in 2013) there is a level of speculation to our discussion.
The very concept of a ‘City of Culture’ implies that
cities are not normally defined through culture – urban
culture, civic culture, sub-cultures, artistic culture, and so
on. But why not? The ‘why not’ question is diagnostic.
As the Network report indicates, the City of Culture
project can instigate a diagnostic inquiry into the City’s
cultural deficiencies, or lack of coherent urban cultural
formation and identity. I would contend, however, that
the way the UK City of Culture is framed by government
cultural policy, it is more likely that ‘culture’ will function
as a lesser significant heuristic, or device for identifying
segmented social and economic deficiencies, many of
which are not constitutive of culture at all.
The UK City of Culture accolade (Is it an accolade –
perhaps it is surreptitiously corrective?) assumes that
‘culture’ requires investment (if not civic ‘wealth’),
extensive programme management, government
directives, countless strategies, special events, and so
on. On one level this is a puzzle. Why do tourists flock
to places like Marrakesh, where they have no such
programmatic approach? It also embodies a paradox –
national cultural policy is shot through with demands for
‘social inclusion’, outreach and social engagement. Yet,
culture is conceived in terms of a complex strategic urban
management, thus already abstracted from the condition
of its social interconnectedness.
Yet ‘culture’ is indeed a perplexing issue, and a social as
well as economic problem for public policy. Culture is not
one coherent sphere of activity; it extends from the baselevel practices of social life (food, clothes, leisure, the
urban environment) to the discursive sophistication of the
global art world. The Network report is right to state that
the UK City of Culture title will galvanize communities of
practice and policy-makers within a city to think ‘culture’
as a single (if necessarily hybrid) public-policy project.
As the UK has never had a national cultural policy (only
institutionally segmented policies, like ‘arts policy’ and
so on), so this is surely a constructive move. And beyond
the macro-economic frameworks of the Olympiad and
the European Capital of Culture, the UK City of Culture
will also demand a re-thinking of the city itself as a
cultural entity, not just a platform for a series of arts
projects, or a platform for the global economy, or a series
of interlocking regeneration projects (ameliorating the
socio-industrial cost of the globalization of the city).
Thinking the city as a cultural space (a place and state of
inhabitation as much as a series of practices) is the first
step in thinking critically about the conditions of culture
and its lack (or seeming absence). The DCMS Bidding
Guidelines, possibly thanks to UK City of Culture Chair
Phil Redmond, is careful not to define culture in terms
of ‘the arts’, and not to define the ‘city’ in terms of a
dominant metropolis (UK City of Culture Working Group,
2009: 7; UK City of Culture 2013, 2009: 2).
I’ll discuss our three questions as I continue to respond to
the Network report:
1. What motivates the cultural city?
This is a question concerning ‘agency’ – Who is
empowered to express a motive? And which motives
are legitimate in public policy contexts? It seems that
the DCMS Bidding Guidance has defined the motive
– an integrated urban regeneration plan. Where in
the original UK City of Culture Working Group Report
of June 2009, urban regeneration is one of a series of
possible frameworks (pp. 6, 9); in the Bidding Guidelines
that followed, it is an imperative (p.1). This raises
questions on the frameworks through which culture can
only find legitimacy in national public policy. And yet,
urban regeneration can be a good policy mechanism
that both admits to the material conditions of cultural
production, as well as place a political obligation on
major city actors to participate in a common project.
Furthermore, culture-led regeneration can re-orient
the standard local plan or city development plan away
from civil engineering to the intangible – the people’s
experience of the city, the image of the city, the cultural
content of urban life, public space and public culture, the
aesthetic values and beliefs embodied in urban design,
the symbolic language of civic historicity and identity,
the creativity and distinctiveness of the spaces of social
community.
2. ‘Who defines the cultural city?’
The Derry-Londonderry City of Culture Bid (Derry City
Council, 2009) is highly imaginative; its conceptual
architecture is genuinely impressive. The visual design
of the bid document proclaims that policy-making for
city cultures should itself be a creative act. Against
bureaucratic urban cultural policy, policy-making should
be a discursive and critical process and should exhibit the
same imaginative, participatory and risk-taking of art
making itself. For the Bid, the UK City of Culture project
equally forces the question of democracy in public policymaking and of public culture in urban development.
Admittedly, given the politically explosive history of this
region, the Derry-Londonderry Bid does not elaborate
too adventurously on the problematic nature of urban
governance, autonomy, and the political constitution of
culture in the face of national mainland policy agendas.
However, it does face two policy challenges head on:
how we construct a compelling, active and critical
urban culture in the face of globalization; and how we
construct mechanisms of collaboration and involvement
– where the city itself becomes the site of cultural (re)
production and reinvention (not a platform for imported
global art world celebrity).
One issue articulated by the Network report was the
structure of the UK City of Culture bidding process –
the competitive element can demand an opportunistic
approach to city cultural development (i.e. not
sustainable). For the ‘losing’ cities the damage to cultural
policy aspirations, not least stakeholder motivation, can
be adverse. Derry-Londonderry made the Bid a part of
their non-negotiable medium term strategic cultural
development, fleshed out in their urban regeneration
plan (Ilex URC, 2010). Derry-Londonderry obviously
conducted some kind of City ‘cultural audit’, revealing
pressing needs and requirements.
The nature and methodologies of ‘cultural audit’ as part
of cultural policy requires further research attention.
An audit should define and assess what city urban
regeneration strategies routinely refer to as ‘cultural
infrastructure’. What is telling is that it is assumed
(both by DCMS and the bidding cities) that such an
‘infrastructure’ would not have the capability itself of
managing a bid, let alone the process of urban change
that should follow. Indeed, the ‘cultural infrastructure’
of even the most cultural active city (Glasgow,
Manchester, excepting London, but we all know why)
is weak in urban policy-making participation, public
projects management and civic-political capability. UK
cities are usually punctuated by a small series of arts
and heritage silos, each that all too often take as their
immediate framework of validation national policy, or
the international art world, or global heritage - it is rarely
‘the city’ – their city. There are a lot of disincentives in
the contemporary art world, for example, for making ‘the
city’ the focus and primary site of your art. The rhetoric
of national cultural policy celebrates the global and the
international (how often do you hear ‘world class’ as a
term of validation); it thus so denigrates ‘the local’ (as
in the audible groan that accompanies the term ‘local
authority’). It denigrates the civic and the city, as well as
those citizens who have no cultural-economic access to
the global or international at all.
33
3. What value does a cultural city title have?
Value – as it features in the Derry-Londonderry bid, takes
after the character of literature, not policy descriptors
and their criteria of measurement. It is expressive,
communicative and responsive, with its validation found
in the extent to which the city finds the means of its
own self-reflection and capacity to change. The city
is subject and agent, and itself citizen in a global civil
society. Urban policy all too often locates the nexus of
social empowerment-disempowerment in institutional,
environmental and infrastructural facilities (‘official
culture’), and not in the relational (sometimes anarchic
or chaotic) dynamics of social interaction. The UK City of
Culture can play a valuable role in redefining value for
national cultural policy – less in terms of economic ROI
than the creation of an active citizenry, enfranchised in a
newly constituted civic polity. The economic is a means,
not an end.
With Liverpool 08 as a now mandatory exemplar, a
city-title project is not just a year-long festival after the
manner of the ubiquitous global art biennales; it is a
social re-articulation of the city’s entire raison d’etre
(Garcia, Melville and Cox, 2009). For Derry-Londonderry,
that entails making the reality of its historical violence
one of the conditions of its reinvention. Narrative is at
the centre of this reinvention, and the means by which
the city locates the means of its own autonomy and selfdetermination. It articulates a form of cultural literacy
that is as social as artistic, and infinite in possibility.
Whatever bureaucracy will ensue, this is a great place to
start a UK City of Culture project.
Department of Culture, Media and Sport (2009) Equality
Impact Assessment: UK City of Culture, London: DCMS.
Derry City Council (2009) Derry-Londonderry Candidate
City UK City of Culture 2013: Our Bid, Derry-Londonderry.
Garcia, B., Melville, R., Cox, T. (2009) Creating an impact:
Liverpool’s experience as European Capital of Culture,
Liverpool: Impacts ’08 European Capital of Culture
Research Programme.
Ilex URC (2010) ONE: One City One Plan One Voice –
A Regeneration Strategy for the City of Derry, DerryLondonderry Strategy Board/Derry City Council.
Redmond, P. (June 2009) UK City of Culture Vision
Statement, London: DCMS.
UK City of Culture 2013 (2009) Bidding Guidance,
London: Regeneris Consulting/DCMS.
UK City of Culture Working Group (June 2009) UK CITY
OF CULTURE Working Group Report, London: DCMS.
UK City of Culture Working Group (2009) TERMS OF
REFERENCE, London: DCMS.
Dr Roberta Comunian is Creative Industries Research
Associate at the School of Arts, University of Kent.
She holds a European Doctorate title in Network
Economy and Knowledge Management. She is interested
in: relationship between public and private investments
in the arts, art and cultural regeneration projects,
cultural and creative industries, creativity and
competitiveness. She has been Marie Curie Fellow at
University of Newcastle investigating the relationship
between creative industries, cultural policy and public
supported art institutions. She has also undertaken
research on knowledge transfer and creative industries
within an AHRC Impact Fellowship award. She is
currently researching the role of higher education in
the creative economy and has recently explored in
various papers the career opportunities and patterns
of creative graduates in UK.
Mind the gap: the cultural city and the creative economy
After reading this insightful report, I wish to contribute
to the discussion by focusing more closely on the
relationship between the cultural city and the creative
economy. Of course there are many definitions of
both the term cultural city and the creative economy.
With respect to cultural city, for the purpose of this
conversation, we can simply limit ourselves to consider
this from a policy perspective: those cities that aspire to /
compete for a cultural title or invest in flagship cultural
building and events. Although this is a very limited
definition, it highlights the urban policy perspective
towards the cultural city. The creative economy is of
course also a much debated term, however, for the
purpose of this discussion, I simply want to consider the
creative economy as the fabrics of cultural and creative
producers and practitioners that inhabit our cities. This
includes the artists, producers and makers across a variety
of creative sectors that make a living or develop their
own career around creative and cultural production. I
believe that the three questions put forward to the panel
for discussion provide a useful framework in which to
consider the relationship between cultural city and the
creative economy. Furthermore, I will try to address them
with reference to my own research in the context of
Newcastle-Gateshead in 2008-2009 (Comunian, 2011).
What motivates the cultural city?
When looking at what motivates the cultural city,
there is always a strong economic argument made
by policy makers about the importance of cultural
titles and flagship cultural developments for the
local creative economy. This argument is misleading
in two ways. Firstly, they are based around the view
that the creative economy is a booming sector for
growth and jobs. This view has been considered by
many to be overrated (Oakley 2004; Comunian 2009)
and often misleading. It seems to present a distorted
understanding of the working dynamics of the sector.
For example in 2004 Northern Film and Media, the film
and media development agency for the North-East had
commissioned a report trying to assess the size, economic
contribution and jobs created by the sector. The report
included many of the traditional economic measures
of growth but the most striking finding was that “90%
of the SMEs surveyed have no commercial goals (…)
Less than half have an up-to-date business plan. (…)
most currently choose to apply that talent to building
cultural or social capital rather than making money”
(Northern Film and Media, 2004, p.7). These contractions
highlight the difficulty in capturing the value (economic
or other) of the sector. Secondly, in the cultural city
titles and investments the kind of economic growth
that is promoted is centred around creating tourism and
cultural consumption (new shopping centres and nighttime economy areas). Therefore, the majority of jobs
created tend to be low-end service jobs. The arguments
do not focus on promoting the growth of economies of
creative production (supporting small creative businesses
or developing spaces and opportunity for them to
reach market). Fuzzy arguments are used to emphasise
that investing in cultural consumption will impact on
creative production but often, the large developments
promoted in large scale regeneration projects end up
pushing out cultural producers from those urban areas.
So although the creative economy argument is used as a
key motivation for the development of cultural cities, it is
often misunderstood or used in instrumental ways.
35
Who defines the cultural city?
What value does a cultural city title have?
The disconnection between the cultural city and the
creative economy is even more evident when it comes to
the negotiation of who defines the cultural city. Cultural
cities titles and events – as the report highlight – have the
power and potential to bring together different cultural
and policy agencies together to define / progress the
cultural development of cities who apply for a title or
investments. However, while large cultural institutions,
local cultural partnerships, universities and investors
find easy access to committee and planning discussions,
this is often not the case for local creative industries and
practitioners. As the sector is formed mainly by small and
medium size companies, freelancing and sole-trading are
very common, therefore it is almost impossible for the
voices and needs of the sector to be heard or to play a
role in shaping the cultural city. It is sometimes the case
that local networks of creative companies can enable
some representation and local clusters or producers can
take part in defining the cultural city, but more should
be done to guarantee that the small creative and cultural
producers or practitioners are involved in defining it
alongside the community and other interest groups. In
the case studies investigated in the literature until now –
Glasgow, Liverpool, Newcastle-Gateshead, Bilbao - there
is very little evidence of the presence and contribution
of local creative and cultural producers in shaping and
defining cultural cities.
Finally, it seems clear that cultural city titles and flagship
cultural development might deliver very little value for
the local creative economy (Campbell, 2011). Of course,
local creative practitioners recognise that the improved
image of a city has an impact also on them. It is easier to
associate oneself with a cultural city than non-cultural
city, however image boost aside, it seems that there is no
particular attention or specific initiative that aims to link
the awarding of a cultural city title with creating value
for the local creative economy. A cynical view from the
representative of a media support agency I interviewed
in Newcastle-Gateshead said to me “these cultural assets
are the kinds of things that it’s good to have. It doesn’t
make factories go faster or it doesn’t make computer
games easier to program”. However, it is possible for
planning and policy to try and create value for the local
creative economy, by promoting local producers, by
commissioning work, by directing visitors also to smaller
workshops and not just to major institutions.
Campbell, P (2011) Creative industries in a European
Capital of Culture. International Journal of Cultural
Policy, 17 (5), 510-522.
Comunian, R. (2009) Questioning creative work as
driver of economic development: the case of NewcastleGateshead. Creative Industries Journal, 2, 57-71.
Comunian, R. (2011) Rethinking the creative city: the role
of complexity, networks and interactions in the urban
creative economy. Urban Studies, 48, 1157-1179.
Northern Film & Media (2004) The moving image sector
in the North East of England: mapping, benchmarking
and economic impact report. Report commissioned to
Pembridge partnership Limited.
Oakley, K. (2004) Not so cool Britannia: the role of
the creative industries in economic development.
International Journal of Cultural Studies, 7 (1), 67-77.
Peck, J. (2005) Struggling with the creative class.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research,
29 (4), 740-770.
Conclusions
Thinking about the disconnection between the creative
economy and the cultural city can help us to deconstruct
a rhetoric discourse fuelled by ‘fast-urban policy’ (Peck,
2005) about what the cultural city can do for local
creative economies. Rather than taking for granted that
large cultural investments and cultural titles help local
creative industries, it is important to consider what kind
of benefits they can provide and verify and evaluate if
these benefits are real rather than theoretical. As one
of the leaders of a local cultural community organisation
in Newcastle suggested “my worry is that the public
might start to consider culture just as the big shiny
buildings … there are fantastic things happening in
pubs, there are fantastic things happening in workshops,
in the middle of nowhere, there is some great work
which is not seen by the public”. It is important that the
cultural city places attention on Culture with a capital C
but also on the smaller creative and cultural producers
that work in the city.
37
Dr Oliver Mould is a Human Geographer at the
University of Salford with a passion for the creative
practices of cities – both those that contribute to
capitalist accumulation and those that seek to resist
it. He has researched urban subcultures, the creative
industries, urban cultural policy and the visualisation of
cities. He blogs at tactiy.co.uk
The. Cultural. Cities. Research. Network.
Five words, four of which have an element of contention
and are, in essence, controversial and loaded terms.
Here’s why...
Let’s start with Cities – half the world’s 7 billion people
now live in cities, and the UN predict that 75% of the
world’s population will be urban by 2050. So more and
more people are flooding into our cities, particularly
the megacities of the Global South, and as a result,
there will be more beliefs, opinions, cultures and modes
of expression fighting for space and fighting for their
voice to be heard. Perhaps we are seeing the kernels of
this with the recent Occupy movements? David Harvey’s
recent book, ‘Rebel Cities’ certainly argues that this is
the case. And so urban scholarship, and getting our cities
right – will be more critical than ever – the science of the
21st century will be the science of cities.
Next, Cultural – Raymond Williams noted that culture
is one of the most difficult words to define within the
English language, and ever since the Enlightenment and
the work of Van Humbolt, through the controversies
of Environmental Geographies in the 20s, cultures have
been difficult to capture and define, and used as a
means of justifying hegemonic power relations.
And of course now, in the context of a cultural cities
research network, it can refer to the cultural industries,
which is an equally tricky concept. Whether they are
distinct from that other definitional minefield, the
creative industries is a debate for another arena, suffice
to say that the cultural industries are often heralded
as a panacea for the economic difficulties we find
ourselves in.
Evangelists of the cultural economy, and the related
concepts of the creative class and cultural cities often
proclaim the benefits of being cultural and creative, but
as Jamie Peck would argue, it is personified by a rather
narrow, neo-liberal characteristic. The latest policy fad of
urban regeneration planners is often used as an excuse to
carry out existing development programs, but under the
rubric of cultural-led development instead of business-led
or transport-led.
And finally The – from a social theory perspective the
word ‘the’ when applied to phenomena – ‘the’ city, ‘the’
creative industries etc is inherently problematic, as it
implies one-ness and uni-directionality, which can belie
the multiple worlds that we live in and can ontologically
restrict pluralistic urban practices. So from a philosophical
point of view, the word ‘the’ should not be used to
curtail our understanding of complexity, heterogeneity
and multiplicities.
So urban cultural policies are rarely properly interrogated
in political realms, and what is even more rare, is the
recognition of those cultural practices ‘outside’ this
rather narrow neo-liberal purview of what constitutes
cultural or the cultural city, for example urban
subcultures (parkour, skateboarding, yarn-bombing etc.)
These people practising (sub)culture in a meaningful (in
that they adhere to a belief or set of cultural norms that
are based on something beyond capitalist accumulation),
creative and playful way, are often marginalised from
the cultural city paradigm altogether. Therefore, while
culture can be a wonderful and essential addition to the
capitalist accumulating processes of the contemporary
city, it is important to recognise that it can also be a state
that is in opposition to it as well.
Research, there is no issue with.
Then we have Network – it’s a term that has been
somewhat overused in social science literature and within
public policy, but again, the idea of a network is one that
is not without its problems. Often, the network paradigm
is predicated upon an exclusively associative ontology - a
hangover from the preponderance of Latour and Actor
Network Theory. But what happens when a network does
not always add or enrol? The cultural sector is heavily
predicated on social networking. The large amount of
freelancers and SMEs creates a vast ‘pool’ of contacts
which means that having a ‘good’ network is critical.
But what happens when a cinematographer is working
on a film for example and does a really bad job? What
happens if bad management of a SME means they fail to
deliver their part of a project? Networks also nonwork,
and notwork. There is disassociation and latency,
dysfunctionality - and these characteristics are chronically
under-theorised within the social scientific literature.
So, The Cultural Cities Research Network - it contains a
whole host of fascinating departure points for research
and study. And through the contestation of these terms,
and the themes they coagulate together, we are here to
think about the cultural city in terms of 3 ideals:
In terms of motivation, it is clear from some of those
ideas above (and those discussed at length in the
report), that there is a clear economic and regenerative
motivation underpinning the cultural city mandate and
the bidding process more generally. This is of course an
important rationale, but can it be the only one? Being
motivated to regenerate a deprived area and to upgrade
the economic potential of an area is commendable, but
are they cultural motivations? It is important to balance
out the economic and political motivations with more
community-based, and people-focused approaches, this I
believe gets closer to a city’s culture...
Can Oldham then be considered a cultural city? Would
it have any value if it was? Given the scale of its CQ this
is unlikely, but what about the other cities? Norwich?
Birmingham? Is there value in labelling them cultural
cities? The value comes in forcing city governance (both
private and public) to hopefully think about culture in
a way beyond regeneration and economic recovery.
Recognition of the value of cultural participation as
going beyond purely an economic benefit to a social
and community one, is the key to unlocking the true
value of the cultural city.
And just finally (as a brief epilogue), in many ways,
the term cultural city can perhaps be seen as a bit of a
non-sequitur as a city is always defined by its culture; as
Sharon Zukin noted, culture is a heterogeneous and fluid
‘dialogue’ within the urban environment between its
citizens. But to give a city a label of culture is to describe
that city in one way; whether that’s a culture of business,
a culture of heritage, a culture of sport, even a culture of
hedonism; limiting a city to just one of those cultures is a
risky strategy because it has the potential to marginalise
and obfuscate the multiple cultures that exist in every
city. This is not to say it cannot be done, it just requires
more care and attention than is currently observed. And
to really get to grips with which part or which aspect of
a city’s culture to focus on (without the risk of alienating
the rest), requires a great deal of research.
Which is why for The Cultural Cities Research Network,
the most important word is research.
...and therefore allows you to think more carefully
about who defines a cultural city. For example, Cultural
Quarters in the UK are a key tenant in the cultural city
mandate. Some have been successful, and they tend to
be ones that have been more ‘organically’ developed
through the right balance between private interests,
community involvement and government intervention.
Oldham is a good example of a CQ that is small, but
designed with the needs of the community in mind,
which was badly affected by racial tensions and rioting;
there is a library for young adults, and an art gallery/
exhibition space that focuses on the celebration of
minority culture.
39
Dr Peter Campbell is a Lecturer in the Department
of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the
University of Liverpool. His work currently focuses on
issues to do with cultural policy, the creative economy
and urban regeneration. He has worked on the
assessment of a number of cultural festivals, including
the ‘Impacts 08’ programme examining the multiple
effects of the ‘European Capital of Culture’ award on
the city of Liverpool.
In conducting this research into the experience of cities
that bid for the UKCoC title, the ICC raises important
questions regarding the continuation of the ‘cultureled regeneration’ paradigm. The ICC’s findings suggest
that an important aspect of the UKCoC competition
is its acting as something of a beacon around which
attention can be focussed within cities, uniting disparate
institutions and agendas. This focus may then enable
a coherence of activity which serves to attract external
attention, which may in turn prove beneficial to the host
city. As the stated goal of the UKCoC award is, in part, to
replicate the success of Liverpool’s ECoC year (Burnham
2009), this motivation seems like a natural continuation
of Liverpool’s experience; O’Brien (2010) notes how local
institutions with a historical antipathy to cultural policy
cohered to varying degrees around the Liverpool ECoC
bid, and the ICC research is not the only project to note
the high level of external media coverage generated by
Liverpool’s ECoC programme (cf. Garcia et al. 2010).
What is also rightly noted by the ICC, however, is the
need to exercise caution when considering the extent
to which Liverpool’s success in these areas may be
replicated. On the face of it, the cultural sector may
seem to be an especially malleable one, and so any of
the benefits which are associated with cultural practice
could be understood as being potentially available to
any city that chooses to adopt the cultural agenda.
This agenda may thus seem to provide an especially
appealing source of value to cities which are contending
with difficulties in the face of transformations in global
economic organisation. Yet it has long been noted
(e.g. Scott 1999; Oakley 2004) that, whilst it may not
rely to the same degree on topography or climate or
other physical factors, successful culture practice can
be just as dependent on the specificities of place. The
mixed fortunes of ECoC cities (Palmer-Rae 2004) attest
to the fact that a city of culture title does not provide a
replicable model of success in and of itself. Indeed, unlike
the award of a major sporting event, there may be little
to link one city’s tenure to the next other than the title
itself, and so we should perhaps be especially wary of
aims to repeat success in this arena.
Indeed, the inability of UKCoC bidding cities to name
current ECoC award holders noted in the ICC research
seems a testament to the wide range of outcomes
possible for host cities. Given the level of investment in
its 2008 programme, combined with a well-developed
historical cultural infrastructure and an internationally
renowned cultural reputation, the extent to which any
UK city may replicate the success of Liverpool’s ECoC year
remains questionable. For the ‘beacon’ of the award to
remain lit, factors like these must be present to act as its
fuel. Whilst only time will tell the extent to which the
first UKCoC in Derry-Londonderry manages to draw in
external attention and any associated benefits, however,
UK newspaper coverage in the first half of 2012 suggests
that interest is currently relatively localised, with 70% of
stories mentioning the award being of Irish origin, and
much of the coverage beyond mentioning the award only
in the context of wider social and political difficulties.
Whilst the availability of suitable cultural resources may
differ from location to location, this competition clearly
provides a focus for cities to comprehensively consider
the resources they have available, and how these may
best be deployed. Yet the ICC research suggests that
variability in these resources is matched by variability
in the level of commitment to their promotion and
exploitation. It is noted that after bidding, “momentum
is seemingly lost as time passes”, and that this can
happen even in a period of time as relatively short as
that elapsed between the ECoC and UKCoC bidding
process within the UK - it is noted that “Birmingham’s
cultural strategy had “lacked purpose” since the ECoC
bid”. Were there a deeper commitment to the role of
culture, shared over many sites and stakeholders, it is
likely that this topic would not fall off the agenda as
swiftly as it seems to.
The ICC research thus assists in highlighting the
numerous paradoxes in this arena. Where such a
deeper commitment to culture does exist, there is
also the suggestion that the UKCoC may not be seen
as an especially useful tool, as is found in the case of
Brighton. In terms of the allocation of this award, what
Brighton may also be missing is a sufficient level of
deprivation; winning cities are often united in terms
of the socioeconomic challenges they face. At the time
of its ECoC programme, Liverpool was ranked as the
most deprived area in the country, and in the city’s
bidding documents for the UKCoC, it is noted of DerryLondonderry that “until recently two thirds of the
city was derelict as a result of conflict and economic
underperformance” (Derry City Council 2009: 5). Whilst
the UKCoC has the potential to unite local institutions
around programme delivery, and potentially provide
positive external coverage of this programme, then, it
is important not to overstate the extent to which such
awards can ameliorate the problems faced by host
cities, or in celebrating culture to draw a veil over these
persistent challenges.
Despite it becoming an oft-cited reference point for
the success of the ECoC programme, relative levels
of deprivation in Glasgow in the wake of its 1990
programme remain high, as they do in Liverpool post2008. Whilst it would be naive to expect a short-term
cultural programme to reverse inequalities in educational
achievements or life expectancy levels, grand claims
are nevertheless often made in just such areas as these
regarding the potentially transformative nature of
cultural engagement. This over-optimism may arise at
least in part from the fact that it is often assumed within
the discourse around programmes such as the UKCoC
that cultural practice of any kind is a universal good, and
equally open to all; that ‘culture’ will unite disparate
communities, open up the economic potential of the
creative economy to diverse actors, build confidence,
and so on. On the available evidence, however, it must
be acknowledged that the kinds of activities involved in
programmes such as the UKCoC – which, regardless of
statements around wide-ranging, holistic definitions of
culture, tend to focus on what can reasonably be joined
under the heading of ‘the arts’ – have just as great a
tendency to divide as they do to unite.
This perhaps does not need noting when referring to
research by the Institute of Cultural Capital, sharing as
it does a name with Bourdieu’s conception of the means
by which social groups and classes maintain thresholds
of distinction via cultural practice and competence.
From one perspective, these processes of distinction are
not necessarily problematic if one is using a cultural
programme to attract tourists who have the means to
introduce economic capital into a host city as a means
of bolstering their own cultural capital. If, on the other
hand, one is trying to unify the shards of a fractured
city, the use of cultural practice to do this might be more
problematic; certainly it would be ambitious to hope that
a cultural programme would serve to maintain distinction
and dissolve it simultaneously, and this paradox may
serve to help explain the seeming difficulty noted in the
ICC research of connecting diverse interests and groups
together under the aegis of the UKCoC.
In designating a city of culture, however, it is possible
that such divisions may be smoothed over in the
implication that the city, and its cultural practices as a
whole are being celebrated. But are we, in fact, largely
celebrating something different – the ability of a city
to be a host to culture rather than its home? There is
certainly evidence to suggest that the greater successes
of the ECoC in Liverpool often relied on creative work
originating outside the city; the puppetry of France’s La
Machine, the ‘Go Superlambananas’ event based on work
by Japanese artist Taro Chiezo, and the exhibition of
the work of Gustav Klimt (McEvoy and Impacts 08 2010).
Without such international work, a city of culture title
risks being parochial; with such work it risks being only
in a city rather than of it. Importantly, the ICC research
encourages us to continue questioning these paradoxes,
and to acknowledge the complexity involved when
dealing with the cultural realm.
41
Bourdieu, P. (1986) Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge.
Burnham, A. (2009) Five Lessons from Liverpool’s Year
As Capital of Culture http://www.culture.gov.uk/
reference_library/minister_speeches/6182.aspx
Derry City Council (2010) Executive Summary of
Cracking the Cultural Code www.cityofculture2013.com/
Documents/2013-12pp-For-Web.aspx
Garcia, B., Melville, R. and Cox, T. (2010) Creating an
Impact: Liverpool’s Experience as European Capital of
Culture: http://www.liv.ac.uk/impacts08/Papers/
Creating_an_Impact_-_web.pdf
McEvoy and Impacts 08 (2010) Tourism SMEs’ reflections
on ECoC 2008: http://www.liv.ac.uk/impacts08/
Publications/Tourism_and_the_business_of_culture.pdf
Oakley, K. (2004) ‘Not So Cool Britannia: The Role of
the Creative Industries in Economic Development’,
International Journal of Cultural Studies, vol.7:1,
pp.67-77.
O’Brien, D. (2010) ‘‘No Cultural Policy to Speak of’ –
Liverpool 2008’, Journal of Policy Research in Tourism,
Leisure and Events, vol.2:2, pp.113-128.
Response from the
Independent Advisory Panel
for UK City of Culture
To begin with, it is important to re-emphasize the two
key guiding principles behind the UK City of Culture
programme, which are embodied within the invitation
to bidding cities to:
1. Define your culture – and outline how you would use
that culture to bring about step-change – in your city;
2. Describe how you would achieve these changes using
existing resources alone.
Such an invitation gives individual cities the freedom
and flexibility to control their own approach to and
management of their city of culture experience,
avoiding any typical, centralized ‘top down’ bureaucratic
limitations or conditions. Perhaps this is best illustrated
by responding directly to the ‘Summary of UK City of
Culture recommendations’ provided in the report:
Increase visibility of title-holding city, including
sustained connections with shortlisted cities and greater
media presence, in order to overcome issues of ‘lost
momentum’, and provide reassurance to future bidding
cities regarding the credibility and viability of the title.
Palmer-Rae (2004) European Cities and Capitals of
Culture: http://ec.europa.eu/culture/key-documents/
doc926_en.htm
* Under the ‘it’s your culture heading’, responsibility and
authority is handed to the city itself to handle its own
marketing strategy and/or relationship with the media,
and therefore control over its own ‘visibility’.
Scott, A.J. (1999) ‘The Cultural Economy: Geography
and the Creative Field’, Media, Culture & Society,
vol.21:6, pp.807-817.
* Similarly, within a city’s self-determined existing
resources, they can choose if and when to collaborate
with other cities and organisations – there are no
additional resources available to facilitate this.
Review bidding framework to ensure that the
‘transformational’ potential of the title is not lost or
subsumed by economic demands, and to allow for more
flexible and equitable definitions of the cultural city.
* The two guiding principles described above are in
place to enable “flexible and equitable definitions
of the cultural city”. The primary aim of regeneration
is a reason for continued central Government
support, with the caveat that the programme is
working towards a re-definition of regeneration
that includes the full spectrum of socio-economic
experiences and outcomes, such as better cultural
offers, education, health care, quality of life etc. This
was incorporated or at least implied throughout the
bidding framework for 2013.
Reconsider the ‘competitive’ bidding element, and how
this may impact upon or limit collaborative working and
knowledge sharing on a national basis.
* The programme can only succeed if it is considered
to be ‘special’ and used to bring people together to
share a common goal – it is the idea of ‘your city’
or ‘their city’ winning that unites communities.
The ‘competitive’ description is also inaccurate and
misleading – the staged (shortlisting) selection
process was established to limit risks and expenditure
for bidding cities. The bid process in itself is designed
to encourage people to come together, form alliances,
partnerships and relationships that may not have
existed previously. There is a bigger risk that other,
non-competitive models would involve cities
being ‘gifted’ the title subject to political agendas
and lobbying.
* The ‘lost momentum’ point is taken, and will be
overcome when the ‘UK City of Culture 2017’
process is announced, which in itself will promote
the on-going credibility and viability of the title.
It is up to bidding cities to decide how to maximise
the ‘badge of authority’.
43
REFERENCES (Part one)
Make the bidding and selection process more consistent
and transparent, in order to facilitate a more discernible
‘level playing field’ for all future bidding cities based on
their own contexts and conditions.
* At every stage of the bidding process for the first
(and so far only) award, it was made clear that this
is a developing, transparent model with the
purposeful intention of ‘levelling the field’. Following
reported dissatisfaction with the bidding process
for European Capital of Culture 2008, applicants
are asked to complete the same form and are each
given two hours to give a pitch or presentation
in a standardised format, therefore reducing the
opportunity for larger cities to utilise greater
resources and exert greater influence.
Consider the creation and support of a UK City of Culture
network or community of interest to enable greater
opportunities and a platform for national cross-sector
learning and knowledge sharing.
* This is not the role, function or responsibility of the
UK City of Culture programme – however, participating
cities can form networks if they so choose, mindful
that there are no additional resources to support
this. This brings us back to the main overarching
principles of the programme – it provides a four-yearly
opportunity for one city to find itself in the media
spotlight. What they do with this opportunity should
be left to them to decide. Any regulatory structure
or system, or prescribed obligations, would defeat
this purpose.
Many of these issues were considered and discussed
by the Working Group before arriving at the adopted
framework; however we acknowledge that the model
is still developing after only one award. Any parameters
beyond the two key guiding principles would undermine
the purpose of the programme, which is simply to give
something extra to the UK’s existing cultural landscape.
Bolden, R., Hawkins, B., Gosling, J. and Taylor, S. (2011)
Exploring Leadership: Individual, Organizational &
Societal Perspectives. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Adapted from correspondence with Prof. Phil Redmond,
May 2012
Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class… and
how it’s transforming work, leisure, community &
everyday life. Basic Books, New York.
Cox, T. and O’Brien, D. (2012) The “scouse wedding”
and other myths: reflections on the evolution of a
“Liverpool model” for culture-led regeneration.
Cultural Trends, 21 (2), 93-101.
Garcia, B., Melville, R. and Cox, T. (2010) Creating an
Impact: Liverpool’s experience as European Capital of
Culture. Impacts 08 European Capital of Culture Research
Programme Final Report. Available from: http://www.liv.
ac.uk/impacts08/Papers/Creating_an_Impact_-_web.pdf
Rampton, J., McAteer, N., Mozuraitye, N., Levai, M. and
Akcali, S. (2011) Ex-post Evaluation of 2010 European
Capitals of Culture: Final report for the European
Commission Directorate General for Education and
Culture. Ecorys UK Ltd. Available from: http://ec.europa.
eu/dgs/education_culture/evalreports/culture/2011/
final-report_en.pdf
Vickery, J. (2007) The Emergence of Culture-led
Regeneration: A policy concept and its discontents.
Research Papers no. 9. Centre for Cultural Policy
Studies, University of Warwick. Available from:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/
cp/research/urbanculture/ccps.paper9.pdf
Garrett-Petts, W.F. Ed. (2005) The Small Cities Book:
On the Cultural Future of Small Cities.
New Star Books, Vancouver.
Griffiths, R. (2006) City/Culture Discourses: Evidence
from the Competition to Select the European Capital of
Culture 2008. European Planning Studies, 14 (4), 415-430.
Landry, C. (2000) The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban
Innovators. Earthscan, London.
Miles, S. and Paddison, R. (2005) Introduction: The Rise
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Mooney, G. (2004) Cultural Policy as Urban
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i
The UK City of Culture competition was launched in July
2009. The then Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw commented:
‘Culture is something that we are incredibly good at in
the UK. But excellence and innovation in the arts does not
begin and end inside the M25 and I believe we have been
too London-centric for too long in our cultural life. So this
competition aims to find a city or area outside London
that has the wow factor, with exciting and credible plans
to make a step change in its cultural life and engage the
whole country’. Derry Londonderry was announced as the
inaugural title-holder in July 2010 (UK City of Culture 2013).
The programme will run on a four-yearly basis, and cities will
be invited to bid for the 2017 title in late 2012.
For more information on UK City of Culture programme
please go to: http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/
communities_and_local_government/6015.aspx
For more information on Derry-Londonderry 2013 please
go to: http://www.cityofculture2013.com/Our-2013-Bid/
Home.aspx
ii
For more information on the AHRC, please go to:
www.ahrc.ac.uk
iii
For more information on the AHRC-led Connected
Communities programme, please go to:
http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/
connectedcommunities.aspx
45
The lead author can be contacted as follows:
Kerry Wilson
Kerry@iccliverpool.ac.uk
0151 231 3807
The Institute of Cultural Capital is a strategic
collaboration between Liverpool John Moores University
and the University of Liverpool.
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